Jason Citron is the CEO of Discord, a chat app that has long been popular among gamers but is beginning to expand to other audiences.
Courtesy of Discord
Delilah, a college student, has been watching “The Bachelor” since she was 12, but she’s never known too many people in real life besides her mom who also watch the reality TV show.
This is why when she discovered Discord, an online chat service, Delilah decided to create her own Discord server specifically for fans of “The Bachelor” and other dating shows.
A year ago, Delilah usually watched rose ceremonies by herself. Now she watches each weekly episode with about six to 10 friends who use her Bachelor Nation Discord server to stream the latest episode together.
Since launching in 2015, Discord has quickly become one of the top places for video game players to gather and communicate online, and it’s growing fast. Discord counts more than 140 million monthly active users, up from 56 million at the end of 2019. The company also has 19 million weekly active “servers” — communities that contain multiple chat, voice, and video channels. Discord offers some advanced features that make these servers more akin to online communities than simple chat rooms, including real-time audio and video conversations, custom emoji, and custom roles that distinguish users.
Unlike most social consumer apps, Discord does not make money from ads. The start-up primarily makes money through Nitro, a service Discord sells for $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year that gives users additional features, such as animated emoji and high-resolution video.
Although Discord is typically associated with online gamers, Delilah is among a growing number of folks who are creating and joining Discord communities that are focused on interests besides gaming. While Delilah’s server is focused on a TV genre, other servers focus their interests based on regions, sports, memes, dating or investing. Among users, 70% say they use the app for gaming and other purposes, which was up from 30% in early 2020, according to a company spokesman.
Delilah discovered Discord when one of her professors conduced remote classes there during the Covid pandemic. She used the app, thought it was cool and decided to learn more about it.
“I started off with using it for school because of Covid and then from there I branched out and saw that you can use it for so many different things,” said Delilah, who declined to give her full name so as to keep her online identity separate from her real world identity.
Discord gained notoriety in the business world in March when the Wall Street Journal reported that Microsoft was interested in purchasing the San Francisco company for at least $10 billion. Talks with Microsoft reportedly have ended, but ultimately, the company announced a partnership with Sony, which took a minority stake in the start-up.
